In yesterday's nightcap, the Dodgers drubbed the Mets 10-2 to take a 3-1 lead in the N.L.C.S. The Dodgers again got strong pitching from their bullpen -- which threw 4 2/3 innings of shutout baseball -- and home runs from Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts.
Today we have the Dodgers and Mets from Queens at 4:08 P.M. Central on Fox Sports 1. Then at 7:08 P.M. Central, we get the Yankees and Cleveland from Cleveland. That game will be on TBS.
The 1977 World Series finished yesterday for me, and let me just say in summary, Wow!
ReplyDeleteI remember at one point in our house on Old Cairo Road in Paducah mentioning to my brother closest in age to me that I hoped one day to live in "The Bronx." I was young enough that I remember believing when I said it that "The Bronx" was a general nickname for all of New York City (like a hipper and tougher version of "The Big Apple"). Our parents were not present for this conversation (and our two older siblings were both already out on their own), so Kurt, who was 11 years older than me, took the moment to try to course-correct my ambitions. "Eric, why would you want to move in to New York? Most of the people in Brooklyn and the Bronx are trying to get out."
This was helpful in that, the way he put it, I knew that Kurt knew that Brooklyn and the Bronx were somehow separate jurisdictions under the New York umbrella. This started me on the road to making sense of the "five boroughs" (which I had vaguely heard of, I think) and, eventually, much later, even stuff like "SoHo" (which, to this day, I usually try to instruct people is just a clever and quick way of designating the neighborhood south of Houston Street (and they usually smile and say something polite like, "Oh, really?" as though they didn't already know that)). I do now wonder, though, if the way Kurt said it--"Brooklyn and the Bronx"--also indicated that he hadn't quite yet made sense of this whole terrain. Kurt was still really young himself. I could see myself at his age at the time and being a recent arrival to Kentucky assuming that Brooklyn was the seat of Bronx County or something along those lines. I wish I would've thought to ask Kurt if he remembered any of this whole conversation.
Anyway, I think Kurt might've been 20 when this conversation took place, because I'll bet it happened some day in late October 1977 when I was 9 and we had just gotten finished all watching the Yankees win the World Series. Sorry about the Dodgers, GoHeath, but it was tremendous.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, there was the baseball part itself. In a world full of me, if we suddenly thought to start a Baseball Hall of Fame after all of these years, and the voting was secret so that no one could criticize one of the mes directly for ignoring the facts, pretty much the entire batting orders for the 1977 Yankees and 1977 Dodgers would get in on first ballot. Those guys were all amazing. Pretty much all of the 1977 Yankees, all of the 1977 Dodgers, all of the Amazing A's, a goodly number of the Big Red Machine (though I hate them) and most all of the other starting All-Stars from about 1975 through 1980 would all get in on first ballot. So would, say, Babe Ruth and Rickey Henderson, and then there'd be a lot of conversation and probably multiple ballots and veterans committees in terms of anyone else getting into my true-heart-of-hearts Hall of Fame.
ReplyDeleteHere’s how the baseball went down.
ReplyDeleteThe Yankees beat the Dodgers, 4-3, in Game 1 in 12 innings in New York; then the Dodgers clobbered the Yankees, 6-1, in Game 2. At this point, I think we all believed Los Angeles was going to win the whole thing. The Dodgers had been terrific all year and pretty much coming together over years to be this terrific; the Yankees were a spackled-together assemblage of overpriced and overrated divas, and George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin were both nuts.
But then the Yankees won close games 3 (5-3) and 4 (4-2) in Los Angeles!
But then the Dodgers clobbered the Yankees (10-4) in Game 5 at Dodger Stadium!
Game 6 came back to Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, Oct. 18, and ABC even pre-empted Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley and Three’s Company to show this thing.
The Dodgers were cheated in Game One. The key games were Three and Four. In Game Three, Mike Torrez pitched a complete game, allowing only three runs on seven hits and outdueling Tommy John, who was L.A.'s best pitcher.
DeleteThat set up Game Four as a must-win for the Dodgers -- they couldn't fall behind three-one with Games Six and Seven in New York.
DeleteThe Dodgers started Doug Rau, and he was awful. He gave up three runs in the first inning and was replaced by Rick Rhoden. But it was too late, because the Yankees were starting Ron Guidry, and he just toyed with the Dodgers. Another complete game victory for the Yankees -- two runs on four hits. And after that, the Dodgers were effectively dead. I didn't even watch Game Five. And I didn't watch Game Six for very long.
DeleteTom Seaver pointed out that the Yankees earlier in the season had sprint races among each other. Mickey Rivers (of course) won, but Ron Guidry finished second.
DeleteWe just didn't know as much back then. I'd never heard of Ron Guidry before Game Four. I didn't know UNC ran a Four Corners until they ran it against us in the 1977 Tournament.
DeleteThe Dodgers took a 2-0 lead in the top of the first, and this was horrible because the runs came in on a triple by Steve Garvey, and Steve Garvey was my main neighborhood/baseball-card friend Rodney's favorite player. I knew I wasn't going to hear the end of how great Steve Garvey was for months if the Dodgers won the World Series, and I was totally right because I didn't hear the end of Steve Garvey for months and the Dodgers didn't even win.
ReplyDeleteThe Yankees tied it in the bottom of the second when Chris Chambliss homered. That dude was clutch! Say what you want about Dale Murphy and Bob Horner, but I knew the Braves were going to finally be good as soon as they got Chris Chambliss.
ReplyDeleteThe Dodgers went back ahead in the top of the third when Reggie Smith homered. That dude was also great. When I started really paying attention to baseball in the middle 1970s, Reggie Smith was with the St. Louis Cardinals. Then they traded him to the Dodgers for Joe Ferguson, and every one of my baseball-card friends on Old Cairo Road knew that was a stupid trade as soon as it happened. When the Cardinals finally got good in the 1980s, I couldn't believe that such a stupid team could actually win the World Series--and then I was disappointed to learn that pretty much the only time the Cardinals have ever been a stupid team was in the first five or so years I started watching baseball.
ReplyDeleteAnd then Reggie Jackson hit all of the home runs--each, as Tony Kornheiser always points out, on the first pitch of the at-bat. In the fourth, in the fifth and in the eighth, Jackson homered.
ReplyDeleteSuper Wikipedia: "He became the first to hit three home runs in a World Series game in 49 years, since Babe Ruth (in 1926 and 1928). With his Game 5 first-pitch homer (in the eighth) and his four-pitch walk in the second inning of Game 6, Jackson homered on his last four swings of the bat in the Series, each off a different Dodger pitcher. The last eight pitches delivered to Jackson in the Series were all productive for the Yankees—the four-pitch walk in the second inning allowed him to score on the Chambliss homer."
I saw it happen in 1977, and I watched it again last night, and I'm here to tell you that Reggie Jackson is the best baseball player of all time, and there's a whole room in my true-heart-of-hearts Hall of Fame to prove it.
The ABC broadcast team for this World Series was Keith Jackson, who grew up poor in Georgia, got famous talking about Oklahoma and Texas and died pretty well off, I imagine, in Los Angeles; Tom Seaver, a cogent, Californian baseball-science professor/practitioner (anyone who thinks TV didn't start talking about pitch counts until the 2000s didn't listen to Tom Seaver in the 1977 World Series), and Howard Cosell, who actually was born a Carolina Israelite but who grew up in New York and probably was the most quintessential New Yorker between Teddy Roosevelt and Jay-Z among us Americans who take 20 or 30 years to figure out the boroughs.
ReplyDeleteAmong these three voices--Jackson, Seaver and Cosell--one seemed to always be saying what I and everyone else on this side of Channel 3 was thinking throughout the 1977 World Series.
ReplyDeleteOr not saying. When Jackson hit his third home run in Game 6, all three of them went silent for a second or two, though it was clear from the bat that the ball was gone. It was just unthinkable that dude could do it again--a third home run!
ReplyDeleteSo because we couldn't think it, they didn't say it. We all just watched, stunned silent.
ReplyDeleteAnd then the game resumed. The Dodgers got a little something going in the ninth, and Jackson, Seaver and Cosell knew Los Angeles was a good enough team that the game wasn't actually over until it was over. But then the top of the ninth became about Reggie Jackson having to come in from right field for a batting helmet, whih had already been packed away from the dugout by the Yankee Stadium clubhouse boys. Jackson, Seaver and Cosell noted the incredulity of the moment, as they had The Bronx Is Burning moment in Game 1 and other color from around the 1977 World Series.
ReplyDeleteCosell so clearly loved New York, and he so clearly wanted us to love it, too, in spite of its scars, about which he was honest. I thought Jackson was generous to his old colleague late in Game 6 to talk about how beautiful the leaves were turning in cool Central Park the Tuesday morning of the game.
You know, of course, the last scene of the ABC telecast. It's the one where fans are swarming across the Yankee Stadium field and Jackson is barreling through the crowd like the former high-school running back he was.
ReplyDeleteTo Kurt, who would've been old enough to probably know at least a little about Son of Sam and the financial crisis, all of this looked like fall-of-America chaotic hellhole. To me, who wasn't, "The Bronx" looked like the most exciting place in the world.
1977 was a huge year for me. Kentucky lost to UNC and the Four Corners in March. In October, the Dodgers lost to Reggie Jackson and the Yankees' superior pitching. And at the end of the 1977 season, the AP picked 11-1 Notre Dame over 11-1 Alabama.
DeleteSo I learned -- and learned hard -- that effort and desire are not enough to win. I didn't know for sure what UNC, and the Yankees, and Notre Dame had that my teams didn't have, but I knew that I wanted what they had. And from that time on, I got less interested in sports and a lot more interested in politics.
DeleteOf course, UK won it all in 1978 -- as did Alabama. And the Dodgers beat the Yankees in 1981. But it was too late -- I'd already learned what it felt like to lose, and I didn't like that feeling at all.
DeleteAnd now I'm 58 years old, and I still get excited every time I'm riding a train that pulls into New York City.
DeleteAnd I still don't like to lose.
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